Mrs Mary Leigh

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/m0gkx_fy
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999).

Database linked sources: https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3203/what-were-the-suffrage-campaigners-fighting-for

Family information: Husband a builder.

Additional Information: By March 1907, Mary was in London and taking part in a deputation to the House of Commons, when she was arrested. When in court, she unfurled a WSPU flag and waved it. She was sentenced to one month in prison. In June 1908, after witnessing the violence meted out to women demonstrating in Parliament Square by police, Mary went to 10 Downing Street and threw stones at the window. This stone-throwing was the first such act carried out by suffragettes. Mary was sentenced to two months in prison. She was arrested and imprisoned again for three months for taking part in a 'rush' on the House of Commons and seizing the bridle of a police horse. Mary Leigh became drum-major in the WSPU Drum and Fife Band, which was formed in 1909. Mary was arrested on many further occasions for various militant acts, including, in 1909: causing disturbances at meetings; throwing slates down from a neighbouring roof on to the ground, where a Liberal politician was holding a meeting in Liverpool; and doing the same in Birmingham, when the Prime Minister was speaking at Bingley Hall. For this, and as a repeat offender, Mary was sentenced to four months' hard labour at Winson Green Prison, Birmingham. She went on hunger strike and was forcibly fed. Mary's forcible feeding was the subject of a case brought by the WSPU against the Home Secretary and the prison governor, and her prison experiences were published in the WSPU newspaper. Mary was one of many women arrested on 'Black Friday' in November 1910, but was not charged. In 1911, she was back in prison for not paying her dog licence (tax) and was sentenced to two months in prison. Suffragette Lady Constance Lytton had only received a two-week sentence for the same offence, highlighting the government's differing treatment of working class women compared to wealthy women with influence and often political connections. In 1912, the Prime Minister visited Dublin in Ireland, and Mary threw a hatchet (small axe) through his carriage window, wrapped in a note that said, 'This symbol of the extinction of the Liberal Party for evermore'. After escaping into the crowd, she later reappeared in spectacular fashion by setting fire to a box in the Theatre Royal. Mary was sentenced to five years with hard labour. Mary went on hunger strike and was forcibly fed. She was eventually let out and the case was dropped. Undeterred, Mary was sentenced to two months in prison in 1912 for window smashing and assaulting a policeman. She was friends with suffragette Emily Wilding Davison, whose militant acts led to her death in 1913.

Other Suffrage Activities: Mary's 'troublemaking' reputation, from her suffragette days, meant that she had trouble finding work as part of the war effort in 1914. Ever resourceful, Mary reverted back to her maiden name of 'Brown' and was taken on to train as an ambulance driver. She worked at the New Zealand Expeditionary Force Hospital in Surrey.